I wanted to take advantage of being in the area, so after scouring over sotl.as, finding a peak that met some of my requirements, studying the (digital) topo map and finding very little info for the approach, I went with a peak that seemed well within my wheelhouse. Plus, it has a cute name to boot, “Nutt Benchmark”. It was also a First Activation peak, so those are always fun (and typically involve the most planning and do tend to give me a little anxiety.
Preflight:
At the Sitgreaves Pass View point is a wonderful (and big) with some flat spots pull out that we ended up using as a post up. That was the one useful tip the couple of trip reports I found contained. So with some daylight left, and me wanting to do a little exploring I managed to climb my way to the top of the nearby ridge line. It turns out that there was a well cairn’d use trail that wandered off in the direction I wanted to head the next day. After walking out about a mile and confirming this approach trail would work, I opted to shift from the route I was going to use to staying up along the ridge line to a specific saddle. From the saddle to the summit is about a mile.
Lets do this:
So with that I was off from the pass at around 8:30 in the AM. I would say the ascent from the parking lot to the ridge line, and then a few segments along the final push are kind of the cruxes along the hike. Well, that and the various cactus (some of which were in bloom on this walk). If you have ever been to Oatman down the hill you have probably encountered the very docile and tame donkeys. However out here in the uplands those donkeys are a bit more feral. As soon as I crossed into the hills and they were aware of my presence, they were gone. The walk is in a N by NE direction until a saddle is reached with great views over towards the Hualapai Mountains. From here turn towards Northwest and knock out the last 800 feet of elevation gain in about a mile.
Because the elevation gain is pretty minimal I made pretty good time scooching along the approach ridge. You actually pass right under another SOTA summit (4975, W7A/SM-055) that would make for a fun two-fer. For what I could tell the approach up 4975 would be pretty easy, but it does look steep. I was considering the two-fer and would allow the build up of clouds determine yes or no. Once the saddle is reached the trail (for the most part) is over, there are plenty of braided paths to the summit, however one thing I would advise is to not push for the final ridge until after that last rock wall you encounter. After that though it’s smooth sailing.
Summit and Activation:
The summit area is a large flat area so plenty of room to spread out and enjoy yourself. Since this is not that popular of a peak (for some reason), it’s not like you have to keep your station setup small. When I say this peak is not that popular, the last person to sign the log that was on the summit was in May of 2023, ten months ago. The log based upon the the business card inside the PB Jar (yah do not use PB jars, those plastic lids deteriorate quick) was placed by the Las Vegas Mountaineering club. No idea if they plan outings or what.
I spent about two hours on the summit on a day following a pretty large solar storm, so the fact that I managed 40 contacts across five bands was pretty impressive. No DX to be had, and as much as that probably had to do with my late start, i am guessing the dead bands also were a part of it. SFI of 195, and K of 4 are not optimal conditions, but as I noted, I made it work.
Time to wrap up:
Part way through the activation I was noticing the same afternoon build up of clouds and virga that we kept getting during the softball tournament, so I opted to stick around a bit longer and keep activating, but would skip the second peak. The walk down was pretty uneventful except that I did step on a chunk of cactus, and it went through the bottom of my shoe (ouch), so that took a few minutes to dig out.. That and for whatever reason I kept losing the trail on the return even after I was on the main path. So pay attention. Overall I would put this as a medium effort peak, I covered a total of 10.25 miles and just shy of 2200 feet of total ascent.
Some final parting shots:
73 de N6JFD/P
Not the best of conditions, but still made it all across the US
Two days in Guadalupe Mountains National Park for a day of hiking the Texas State High Point
In the quest for state high points and available time for getting up to the PNW we spent two nights at Guadalupe National Park. The Guadalupe Mountains are a North/South running chain in the West of Texas and South East of New Mexico. This area is also close to Carlsbad Caverns which if you have the time is worth a stop over as well. This mountain range at one point was a reef bed and many of the fossils date back to some 40M years ago during the Permian Age1.
Where to stay in the park:
There are two main campgrounds, plus a horse corral. The Pine Springs Campground is at the base of the hike for Guadalupe peak which was my goal on this outing. The Pine Springs CG uses part of the parking lot for 13 “RV” sites, and there is a separate loop in the same area for tent campers to make for an easy leisurely start to get up Texas’ state high point. This area is really close to the Central/Mountain Time Zone line, so at times your phone will present with one or the other. Hopefully while you are there time is not that important because it’s hard to know what time it really is :D. My Garmin once I started my GPS track was using MST even though my phone was still showing CST.
The Hike:
The steepest part of this trail, and the part that is going to make or break you is the first two miles. Lots of steps made by people with long legs and a short torso, so for those of us who are say…average height (or shorter) and are a 50/50 torso/leg split do have a bit of extra work. The other option is follow the others up the side of the rock steps creating new erosion channels (see principle 2 of LNT for why you should not do this). I wanted an early start because as usual the goal was Summits on the Air, and hopefully some EU/UK DX. I was moving pretty early on and greeted by the park volunteers at the bottom of the trail with the usual questions of “enough snacks, enough water, layers?” etc. Today’s weather was calling for high winds and temps in the 40-50s, towards the top there was also some snow, ice and mud on the trail. Also this is a pretty arid area so a good amount of water even on a day like today is necessary. An interesting combination of conditions to really have to prepare for.
Up I went making a good pace ahead of my hiking partner as I knew I would be hanging out on top, and wanted some time to setup. Normally I would not say separate from your group, but this was a pretty straight forward trail with out any real turn offs to end up in the wrong area. I made pretty good time overall for maintaining a consistent pace; the ascent is a tad more than four miles with an elevation gain of about 2900 feet. The Munter method would put this at a 3:45 minute hike, I knocked it out in 2:16. All that walking (and swings and squats) pay off :D. As far as the ascent went and I had an idea that because the trail is on the canyon side of the hills that we were getting a funnel effect. At about 1.5 miles the trail hooks hard left at a rock out cropping and this was the worst bit of the winds this day, but after about 200 yards you end up in a tunnel of Pine trees that cut the wind down for the next bit. I will note that this trail has a bunch fo exposure, which made for a fun descent (more on that later). The last mile was where the snow, mud and some ice was. I was quite surprised to see ice given the semi arid location, but some winter/wet weather had ripped through a few days before. So, be aware that winter weather is a possibility.
Setup the radio gear in a way to not be too wind effected and the wife was not far behind. She too beat the Munter Method timing by a good hour! For the SOTA stuff, I spent 2 hours activating across 5 bands all cw and managed 58 contacts. Most of the DX came on 21mhz and 28mhz was great for the whole US. DX included France, England, Spain and Switzerland.
The Descent:
One of the rules I hike/peak bag by is “anything you go up you have to come down” and that has served me well, as noted in the Big Bend post I almost broke that rule but today is not about me and my descent. I’d been aware of this one particular group on my ascent and while I was hanging out. As I was about 200 yards down I found a party who had one individual near tears and almost frozen in their tracks. This group had left about 30 minutes before me from the summit and this was as far as they got. I called out a bit ago that there was a fair bit of exposure to this walk, you are above treeline, while the summit area is pretty big the trail is exposed with long steep drop offs on the sides and this individual had reached their breaking point. They were not having it. I decided it was time to engage and pull out all those skills I’ve picked up over the years to walk the group down and overall it was a great experience. The single most important thing you can do if you do engage to help someone is listen to what they are saying.. Not just hear, but LISTEN. I had noticed that this person kept asking us to walk down in front on the harder step down. Basically they were learning what we were doing with our feet, so I made sure to wait every time we came to one of those dicey sections. Now keep in mind, I love it when a hike takes me into evening and I can catch a sunset, and I had an idea that this would happen. At one point because the cellular service is pretty dodgy I ended up having the wife monitor Simplex on the radio just in case we needed other assistance up there. Note yes there is some cellular service but it is dodgy at best, and there are parts of the trail where you go 30 minutes with no service (including no SOS), so plan accordingly. It took us about 4 hours to get down, but we all managed to get down safely. Hopefully this individual was not too turned off by the experience and their group of four does continue venturing out into the hills. I really had an enjoyable time talking and walking with the three who remained with me on the descent.
Key Takeaways/epilogue:
This was a great area to stop and play, and I recommend it if you are in this area, that said book early. We did end up having to move from one campsite to another in order to stay for two days. From a hiking preparedness perspective, this is a reminder too/from me to always turn around on your way up to make sure that when you look down you do not freak out. Of the people I have helped over the years both in the name of SAR and as a good samaritan, the mental hurdle is one of the hardest things to overcome when you are in that exposed out situation. We can always warm up, consume calories etc, but when we are freaking out/disregulated getting re-regulated can be the biggest hurdle to getting back on the move. Not a lot planned for March other then work our way up to the PNW and then back down to SoCal , but that said April and May will be another springtime adventure off in the UK.
After a month in Florida it was time to start westward. Big Bend seemed like a great next place to hole up for a little bit given its proximity to nothing. I was hoping to score a week in the Chisos Basin CG, but that was not happening. We ended up with M-F in Rio Grande Village, and somehow scored the weekend in Chisos. I knew I wanted to do at least one peak (Emory) since it was the park’s high point, and there is enough other stuff to do as well to fill the 8 days we were going to be here.
Day 0: Getting there
At the Rio Grande Village CG there is a “nature walk” that goes down to the river, but also a little hill to go up and watch the sunset. We got there with plenty of time to enjoy both. If you have good photography equipment take it with you. The Sierra del Carmen range light up with some amazing hues of reds and pinks thanks to the color of the rocks. I came back for my night wander to do some stargazing. It had been way to long since I have had a good dark sky.. While the night sky here is good its not middle of Nevada dark, but it is still pretty good none-the-less. I was just stoked to have a great night sky.
Day 1: Ernst Ridge Trail
Today was a fun little jaunt along the Rio Grande to the Hot Springs at the end of the trail. It was supposed to be a 6-ish mile out amd back, but we started from the CG so that pushed us closer to 9 miles. This walk offers a lot of interesting site seeing that covers geology as well as natural amd human history. The walk offers great views of the Rio Grande, the Sierra de (mountains), fossils and petroglyphs on the walls around the Hot Springs. Oh yah and hot springs too, which (so and so ) Langford back in the early 1900s created a resort nearby. After lunch amd some time checking out the area history we headed back.
Day 2: Grapevine Hills
The plan today was to head over towards Grapevine Hills and walk out to a balanced rock, however i checked SOTAmaps and realized I was looking right at a peak. It had been six weeks so the urge overtook me to send Meesh on her way and I opted to run up the hill. One thing i will note is that every kind of plant here wants to stick and prick you whether its a cactus or not. This is not the same as say the whitethorn or manzanita i encounter regularly in Nevada. It was the first peak that I was trying out a new EFRW built with K6ARK’s balun kit. I had been using a linked EFHW for the past couple of years and the polystealth wire was starting to get worse for wear. At the end of the day I wound up with about 30 qsos on 28mhz and 21mhz including on contact with Northern Ireland. Most of the contacts were North American based, so not too bad given the last minute decision and no real alert, or other activators in the hills today. Tomorrow we are headed to the Lost Mine trail and I will snag Casa Grande Peak.
Day 3: Casa Grande Peak
I wanted to do some Summits on the Air after my day on Grapevine Hills, and I had been eyeing Casa Grande or it’s neighbor Lost Mine Peak located in the Chisos Mountains sky island. . After pouring over maps, and data I chose Casa Grande, and to be fair it was the more impressive looking peak overall. I took off ahead of Michele from the parking area as she was not following me up this peak (and for good reason). The first mile you follow the Lost Mine trail, and then turn off onto a no longer maintained almost goat trail to the summit. A goat trail it was, it looks like quite a few people head up this peak such that there are multiple goat trails in the absence of a well flagged/cairn’d route to a peak that has a steep approach. Some of the terrain encountered did include a little bit of class 3/4 scrambling (because I like scrambling solid rock instead of fighting with Talus and Scree), and some talus/scree runs that at least have some trees that can be used for hand holds. Once you get up the last gully the trail levels out pretty good and the last 50 or so feet of elevation is a gradual trail. At one point you cover 500 feet of vertical gain over 700-800 feet of horizontal distance. The summit offers a 360 degree viewpoint as far as the eyes can see. Look South towards the Rio Grande, the Sierra del Carmen range and Mexico, glance across the way at Emory Peak which stands close by (and was done later in the week), so plenty of views to be had. Another successful SOTA activation, so we wont go into that, but lets shift into the down route. Looking downhill you can see quite a few options including where some individuals have just bombed straight down the talus fields, which on the map does cut off a LOT of distance back to the parking lot/trail head. I’m not down with that though as rocks hurt and the angle was steep enough that a controlled descent was just not possible. If you can handle that, more power to you. That said as I was trying to contour around, I did wind up on yet another rock band where I was doing a bit of low grade class V climbing but also having to contort and bend to not end up wearing the prickly pear cacti. I almost managed to get cliffed out at one point too, but found a good animal use trail to finally rejoin the “correct” (old/original) trail back to the Lost Mine trail. All in all it took me longer to get down than get up since I had to do a lot of route finding/navigating off the summit. So be warned if you decide to go after this peak.
Day 4: Moving day
Not a lot to really report here, we slow rolled out of Rio Grande Village to Chisos Basin. This is considered “an island in the sky” which I called out above. It was much cooler, but also much more crowded as most people are here to hike some of the trails in the area as well as bag the higher, but easier to reach Emory Peak. There are a plenty of trails to be had here for later days.
Day 5: Emory Peak
Emory Peak
Today’s goal was some Summits on the Air, and the high point of the National Park, and knowing it was a Saturday I wanted to get an early start to keep the crowding on the summit to a minimum while I had an antenna mast up, that and I was starting from the campground, not the Visitor Center area, so that added about 3/4 a mile each way. So on the trail we go with an interesting inversion occuring outside the basin. There was fog/clouds pouring over the Panther Pass area creating a fun misting effect. Fortunately the Emory Peak side of the basin was without the inversion, so views were had all around. I was well ahead of the crowds so far and made it to the trail junction in about 2 hours of walking. This trail junction has a pretty posh setup, there are bear boxes right there, an AED and a nearby privy. Onwards and upwards, the trail stays pretty moderate until the last little bit where the final push for the summit is 2-3 minutes of solid rock scrambling (class IV climbing) onto the top of the summit block. There are two blocks, the taller one is to the right/North when standing between them, or from a visual perspective, the one that contains the radio systems. Speaking of radio systems, one of the antennas was being held up with 5mm paracord..I guess if it works, it works. the USGS marker is close to an edge, but not too crazy. Note that there are sheer drops on the Western side of both summit blocks, so be advised if you have issues with exposure. (actually if you have issues with exposure do not bother with the climb up, but enjoy the saddle as a place to rest, grab lunch etc. It is possible to activate from the saddle, but it will be harder to be out of the way given that some folks will go after both summit blocks. Pretty straight forward SOTA day, 28mhz/10M got me France, Sweden, Germany, Spain and the UK for DX, and the usual suspects from about North America. By the time I wrapped up and started heading down the crowds were really ascending on the summit. It took a good 10 minutes to get off the summit block as I had to wait for a window to sneak down in between groups heading up. Something to be aware of regardless of your intentions for the summit. Pretty much the same story at the trail junction as well, easily 100+ people hanging out, having lunch and resting before the final push up. Note that the Pinnacle’s trail provides access to the South Rim Loop, and many other backcountry campsites, so most people were dropping packs into the bear boxes to snag Emory as part of their outing. Had some enjoyable conversations with individuals on my down walk, including someone sporting the brand new Durston Kakwa 55. This individual was working his way to Florida to put his few remaining possessions in storage and was headed up the AT this spring. He was doing a three day shake down trip to try out the new gear here in Big Bend, and he could not have picked a better place for it..
Day 6: Time to start moving on
However we had time for one last hike on the Window View Trail which is accessed directly from the campground, so we were like a 30 second walk to that TH. This is a pretty short trail that goes to a very cool feature. The trail ends at the top of a waterfall. note that the rock is pretty polished, so even when the creek is dry test your footing as you approach the edge. It is a pretty short trail, but note you descend down to the waterfall, the return is a climb of about 500-600 feet of elevation gain that’s pretty much sun exposed. So if it is summer, carry copius amounts of water and consume it. We made it back to the campground around noon, so with that we decided to head on out of town to cut our drive time to Guadalupe down.
Final Thoughts
Big Bend was pretty damn impressive. I would totally return there, especially with the backpack and check out the South Rim loop, (note that from Feb thru April that trail is closed because of Falcon nesting). It would be fun to put together a 5-6 day loop, during the new moon to really get that star gazing in. I will note, that while this area is good for stargazing and I had some great dark sky nights I still find the skies in Nevada to be darker and clearer. If Big Bend is on your list and you have the time, doing a 7-10 day trip is very possible spending 3-4 nights in each of the three campgrounds. While we never made it to the Cottonwood campground, what I can say is that Chisos vs Rio Grande Village offered two completely different experiences and moving between them was super easy.
A few remaining shots of some sunsets, and random wild life.
Javalina/Piccary
Up Next: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and the Texas State high point.
A plan is good, however a plan (in my experience) only gets you to the trailhead; once you put boots (trail shoes) to the ground then chances are things are going to change. That has been my mantra for years because well that’s how it happens. My saunter up the West Highland Way in 2022 was the closest I have ever come to pulling off perfect execution of “a plan”. Primarily because that one involved stays in INNs, and side trips up peaks doing a fair bit of Summits on the Air. At the end of the day that trip was a very well logistically planned trip both in miles per day walked and in vertical elevation of my summit days. So fast forward about nine months and let us add a little spice to the mix. That is right, the wife wanted to join me on a walk across England along the Wainwright’s Coast to Coast because for both of us, it was our first time to the N York Moors as well as the Yorkshire Dales. I did a fair amount of research leading up to summer guide season so that by the time I was immersed in work I only needed to reference the spreadsheet and book stays here and there to continue filling in those last few columns.
The Coast to Coast Walk, What is it?
The C2C is an approximate 180 mile West to East route that starts in St Bee’s and finishes in Robin Hood’s Bay. The walker starts at the Irish Sea, heads off into the Lake District National Park, over through the Yorkshire Dales and then into the North York Moors before finishing off on at the North Sea. It is encouraged that walkers dip their boots into the waters of each sea upon start and completion. We did end up making a few variations, for starters because I personally love the Lake District National Park, and know that the terrain of the LD is harder than the locations to the East, I figured it would be better for both of us to build up before reaching that area. Also I was hoping to add an interesting variation I found a while back called The “Peaks to Pubs” circumnavigating the Lake District before rejoining the preferred C2C and resuming our Westward jaunt. One of the main reasons individuals walk towards the East is because of the prevailing winds off the Irish Sea. All in all this walk should take 12-15 days for an average walker. If you are not familiar with European walking, you can pay a service to ferry your bags for you based upon your itinerary as well. I think a few of those services will even develop your itinerary and send you a pdf “route card” to boot, at least that was what it looked like with some of the people I passed. That said, the Coast to Coast with the wife in tow had a pretty good plan with most of the logistics already taken care of, but even then things did change.
The Planning Process:
The plan was to come off guide season, head over to the UK, spend a few days getting to Robin Hood’s Bay Whitby, and begin our westward journey. Okay what’s the deal? Why is Robin Hood’s Bay striked out and Whitby was added? Well, RHB is a pretty small town overall and I managed to put our start date right smack dab in the middle of a bank holiday weekend. So by the time I got around to booking that stay everything was taken up. That said, Whitby was on our list of places to visit because of the Magpie Cafe. I am a bit of a fan of English style Haddock Fish and Chips, and found a list on TasteAtlas of the best locations in the world for Fish and Chips. So we opted to spend an extra day here, and check out the Abbey and then start moving along. It also meant for a slightly shorter day 1 since our first night stay was at Egton, which from RHB was a 17 mile (29km) walk. We only walked 12 (19km) instead. The rest of our days laid out as follows
Day #
Start
Finish
Distance Miles (km)
1
Whitby
Egton
12 (19)
2
Egton
Blakely
12 (19)
3
Blakely
Beak Hills
12 (19)
4
Beak Hills
Osmotherly
10 (16)
5
Osmotherly
Brompton
11 (18)
6
Brompton
Richmond
17 (27)
7
Richmond
Grinton
12 (19)
8
Grinton
Keld
14 (23)
9
Keld
Kirkby Stephen
12 (19)
10
Kirkby Stephen
Shap
21 (34)
11
Shap
Patterdale
17 (27)
12
Patterdale
Threkeld
14 (23)
13
Threkeld
Keswick
12 (19)
14
Keswick
Buttermere
12 (19)
15
Buttermere
Wasdale
9 (15)
16
Wasdale
Ambleside
1o (16)
17
Ambleside
Langdale
15 (24)
18
Langdale
Grasmere
10 (16)
19
Grasmere
Borrowdale
11 (18)
20
Borrowdale
Ennerdale Bridge
17 (27)
21
Ennerdale Bridge
St Bee’s
14 (23)
Days and Distances of our plan.
The plan is set, the places were booked, a mix of YHA Hostels, BnB’s based upon the recommendations of the Peaks to Pubs, and whatever else was available.
Once in Whitby we did the tourist thing, saw the Abbey which is well worth the visit, especially during their show and how it relates to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We also hit up the Quayside for Fish and Chips. If you are not familiar with the Fish and Chips in these sea side towns, understand that the fish we were eating was caught that morning, tossed across the street from the boat dock to the restaurant and fried up. I would suspect that fish was out of the water less than 5 hours by the time it ended up in my gullet. Whitby is quite the cute little British holiday town, bigger than a village and similar to some of the places we have been in Cornwall and is where a lot of people head for a long weekend to get away. It was busy for sure.
Day 1: On our start day we walked all the way out to the end of the pier, not quite the same as dipping the boots in the North Sea, but we were out over the water. We walked along what is listed as the “Esk Valley Walk” until Grosmont where we did the typical English thing and had a nice ice cream break. We entered the North York Moors at Sleights. That night we stayed at the Horseshoe Hotel which sits right on the River Esk. They were having a Sunday pig roast for dinner, so yes please. A lot of the walking today was still urban-ish until we crossed into the N York Moors. Once away from the coast the villages become smaller, and the environment is much quieter.
Day 2: Continuing on westward, and because we are finally on the C2c proper we are finally running into those “walking it normally”. It was definitely a conversation starter when we noted we were going E to W (and why). Most people agreed with the reasoning though having tackled those Lake stages early on. The goal today is make it to the Lion Inn on Blakely Ridge. Unless you are wild camping this is the only place to stay unless you want to push on a few extra miles. This was also the day where we made it to those open rolling hills of Heather giving off a wonderful purple hue. It was also nice that we could still see the North Sea anytime we turned around. A lot of this day you spend on the ‘Inn Way’, but the last couple of miles are on the Lyke Wake Walk. We found out what that means with the BnB we stayed at on the third night. The last bit of this day also ends up being some amount of road walking, and this being the Monday of the Bank Holiday, it did end up being a tad busy as folks were still heading back to York (I assume) from the long weekend.
Day 3: Onward to Beak Hills BnB. we finally leave the pavement and head overland for more rolling heather covered hills. The views go on for miles, and as the picture to the left notes plenty of views to be had. The Beak Hills BnB is about 1/2 mile off the main track, but the signage will show you the way. The setting of the farm is amazing, and they have the usual farm animals one would expect for an area like this (Sheep, Horses, etc.). This ended up being my second favorite stay on our journey.
Day 4: The destination today is the YHA in Osmotherley, another iconic English village. We walked along the Cleveland Way (still on the C2C, but signage especially for the direction we were going was spotty at best. Wainwright first tossed out the concept of the C2C back in the 1970s, however it was 2022 that it was finally certified as a National Trail. The C2C organization is actively working on getting signage put up along the pathway. In Osmotherley we made a decision to reconfigure our walking baggage and engaged a baggage service to send everything else to St Bee’s to wait for us at the end. Because this was a pick up and ferry to the end, this only added about £40 to our trip. I shoved the clothes we would use into my AtomPack’s Mo, as well as my Hilltop Pack’s foodbag for carrying our lunch/snacks for walking and my walking partner was using a 10L bum bag to carry some of our other odds and ends. We started the walk carrying everything including Laptop, my portable radio gear etc, so we were able to ditch about 15-20kg for the duration of our trip. Osmotherley YHA, this Hostel is private, but affiliated with the YHA in England/Wales however this might have been one of the nicer YHA’s I have stayed at in England. They have a plush lounge and a very nice self catering kitchen. Osmotherley is also the Western Edge of the North York Moors, the next couple of days is through some farming lands and is a bit flat.
Day 5: Most guides have you stay in Danby Wiske, however I found there to be limited places to stay. I did not get something booked soon enough so we ended up with a few extra steps wandering down to Brompton. The walk out of Osmotherley goes through Arncliffe wood. One of the few areas where you do have some tree cover (not a lot just some). Along this Wood is “The Lady Chapel”. This is worth the stop over, as this chapel (like most) has an interesting story, and does have some affiliation with the Mount Grace Priory down the hill. After checking out the grounds you continue on down into the valley for a while. If you have walked the UK before you may be aware of honesty boxes. If not, individuals will usually put out some snacks, maybe some water bottles or soda’s near the trail. I may have come across the coolest honesty box yet. Aside from the fully stocked fridge of all kinds of beverages there were also chocolate bars and salty snacks. No Magnum Ice Cream bars though. What was cool is how they decorated up the stop, including some lawn chairs for relaxation.
If you can manage Danby Wiske, it is worth it, Brompton was a bit of a run down town, so not a lot to report there. We ended up doing about 12 miles today with some of that being to leave the C2C cooridor to get to Brompton.
St Mary’s Church at Bolton on Swale
Day 6: Richmond! Today was the first longer day I’d put on the books, a whopping 17 miles. Michele opted to go do a “culture” day and I do not blame her, but I really wanted to push those miles because I had a 20 miler day coming up soon. After getting a bus back to within 1/2 mile of the C2C cooridor I set off. Today was threatening rain and at one point it did sprinkle…for about 5 minutes. There was a lot of walking along pasture land, so not the most picturesque day of the walk for me. However when you get to Bolton on Swale, take the time to check out the outside of St Mary’s Church. The roofline makes for some very interesting geometry/visual effects. I probably only noticed this because I was walking towards the west. Had I been walking East I would have missed the view captured above. Continuing along you follow the River Swale and things do start to get a bit more interesting again, and I found Richmond to be one of the more beautiful (non Lake District) Towns along the path. We also happened to be staying in Richmond on a Friday night which meant Saturday was Market Day. If you have control over your timing, I would encourage being in Richmond for a Saturday morning. British Market Towns are a wondrous thing. In the US we call them Farmers Markets, a good chance to stock up on some local food faire for those mid day walk snacks. We picked up some cheeses, water crackers, smoked haddock and apples. It is worth it to check out the water falls at the bottom of the hill beneath the castle on the walk out of town. Better yet just check out the castle, and look down from the various high points of the castle grounds for views of the town center as well as the country side and river.
Day 7: After hitting the various vendors at the market we pushed onwards towards Grinton, we were staying at another YHA that looked like a castle. I really enjoy the character of the various YHA’s. Now to be fair I have stayed in a couple of stinkers but for the most part the YHA’s have served me well. We did start out on a bit of pavement leaving the town center, and we even crossed a marker for the Camino Ingles de Santiago. We only had about 10 miles today and we started late enough that we sat down and enjoyed some of the goodies we picked up at the market square on the Western edge of town. There are plenty of benches along the stretch that are placed right next to the trail. We were finally getting back into some hill-ish country and at some point we entered the Yorkshire Dales. This day totally reminded me of the “over the hills and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go” song as the feel is very much that. We had been in a heat wave the last few days and fortunately the chapel in Marske makes for a refreshing quick stop. They run an honesty shop there that can take tap to pay, but you can also leave a cash donation in the church collection box too. Plus the chapel was quite cool on the inside. They had the usual assortment of soda’s, bottled water, crisps and candy bars. The location of this chapel is what makes it a good spot to stop. You have just come down a hill and are about to climb another (remember that “over the hills” bit I mentioned? If headed westward, there is a sheep pen at the top of the hill in Marrick where you need to turn right and go through to stay on track. It is okay if you miss it though, you will end up on some pavement that loops back around, but the side trip does add about a 1/2 mile. The turn is a reroute that’s not well beat in yet. After this we dropped down into the Steps Wood and rejoined the River Swale the rest of the way into Reeth, then we turned p one more hill to the YHA about 3/4 a mile away.
Day 8: If you have ever heard of the book series “All creatures Great and Small” then the walk between Grinton and Keld is worth paying attention. Part of the walk today shares the path with the Northern leg of the “Herriot Way”. I have never watched the series, but I had heard it/seen it available on Britbox or Acorn or one of those streaming services we get in the US. This segment is getting into more of a backcountry experience too, no real towns to be had. The double track dirt path was pretty hard on the feet, and in some cases the area almost seemed like a moon scape. Take time to check out the Brakethwaite Mill Ancient memorial. Back in the 1800s the area was used to smelt lead ore given it’s access to plentiful water. Nowadays it is just a nice watering hole to relax and take a break before the next climb up. We were staying in Keld tonight, another town without a lot of stay options. There are a couple of pubs so be on it. However if you miss out on those there is the Keld Bunk Barn. They have a Bunk Barn and Yurts and do a good job feeding you. It’s also on this segment that you cross the Pennine Way, yet another bucket list walk to do. Supposedly if you walk about 4-5 miles N on the Pennine Way you reach Tan Hill which contains Britains Highest Inn/Pub. I was unaware of this at the time, but if I had known we may have built in some time to explore that way and would have been worth an extra day to go up stay and come back down.
Day 9: Remember what I said above about the lack of signage? Today it presented itself as a real problem as the segment between Kirby Stephen and Keld has seasonal routes. Coming from the West the signage is great (as we found out). Between Ravenseat and Nine Standard Rigg there are three possibilities depending on the time of year for getting around White Mossy Hill. Speaking of Ravenseat if you are not familiar with the story of this farm, go check it out, I had been following her on IG for a while however the farm was currently shut for personal reasons. Coming out of Ravenseat though we ended up on the segment that was currently a full on bog, and it took us longer than it should have to get over White Mossy Hill. Along the many fields there is a bothy which is a nice spot for lunch as well. Also of note is the Nine Standard Rigg (pictured to the left). We stopped here for lunch before our final descent down the hill into Kirby Stephen. Getting back into these hills is where (for me) the fun was beginning again.
Day 10: The walk to Shap was another solo walk day for me, twenty or so miles on the agenda. It is possible to split this day, but it does require a side trip off the main C2C pathway. There are two towns that each are only about a mile off the main C2C corridor, Ravenstonedale or Newbiggin-on-Lune (I love the town names of the UK). So walking away from Shap the terrain turns into more rolling hills used as pastureland. I found it to be enjoyable for views, the Heather was still adding purple highlights to the fields. The grass was oh so green, and the stone just a wonderful contrast of colors against the blue skies. After a few hours it’s time to take a well deserved break at Sunbiggin Farm. There is a small shack with a fridge and the owners will usually put out some home baked muffins as well as the usual assortment of crisps and candy bars, and the best variety of beverages yet. Take the time to read the story of how this afternoon stop over came to be. I warn you though, watch out for the little four legged beggar, if he does not steal your sandwich, he’ll definitely steal your heart! From here to Patterdale I opted to keep a higher route because I like the views. I ended up stumbling upon a beacon marker that commemorated something to do with Queen Victoria, eventually you come along side then cross over the M6 and drop into the cute little town of Shap.
Day 11: Boat Day
Today the Mrs and I decided to take in something a little different and skipped walking, I will note that we did come back to Shap to do the Shap to Patterdale segment. I was not going to miss out on Kidsty Pike, the high point of the trail (although we did go over Helvellyn via Strider Ridge so we did achieve a higher elevation overall). NOTE: Shap is only served by public transit on Tuesday and Thursday. We took a taxi up to Penrith, caught the 508 down to Pooley Bridge, and then we took a water taxi on the Ullswater down to Patterdale. Frankly not a bad way to spend a zero day.
Day 12: Off to Threlkeld. Okay yah this is not a normal segment of the C2C. Since this was the Mrs first trip to the Lakes the original plan was to walk North from Helvellyn and spend a few days exploring. After about a mile from town there are three options to choose from for heading to Grasmere. The Southern route heads uphill at Thornhow End, and goes up and over St Sunday Crag, the middle route stays down in the valley along Grisedale Beck through Grisedale Forest, and then climbs up to Grisedale Tarn, and the Northern route is a steady slog from Banklands plantation up towards Hole-in-the-Wall and follows along the ridge up the Striding Edge and then turn South from Helvellyn. All three path’s join back into a single route at Grisedale Tarn before heading South through House Gap and follow the Tongue Gill into Grasmere. The Striding Edge is one of the more popular Class 1 scrambles in the UK, so do expect to experience it with a cast of others. The profile is approximately 3 miles to cover ~2450 feet of elevation gain, and because it’s a scramble it took us about 2-3 hours to reach the summit of Helvellyn. So we opted for the Striding Edge route for the challenge, which was a fair bit of fun. You can make the ascent as easy or as hard as you want with exposure, but do keep your head about you. After enjoying our lunch we continued North and followed a route that took us over Whiteside, Raise, Stybarrow Dodd, Watson’s Dodd, Great Dodd, Caifhow Pike and Clough Head before dropping down into Hauswell Brow and making our way across the valley to Threlkeld.
After this we ended up taking a week to explore the Lakes basing out of Cockermouth, Keswick and Ambleside. We explored Buttermere for a day and hiked around the Buttermere lake and from Ambleside we walked out to the New Dungeon Ghyll at Kirk How by way of Loughrigg Fell. After a week we headed to Grasmere (we were supposed to walk from New Dungeon Ghyll to the Travelers Rest, but uh I made a mistake in my booking so no dice..we ended up taking a bus and snagging a night in Grasmere instead).
Looking East towards Fairfield
Day 18: Back to the Coast to Coast crossing from Grasmere to Borrowdale. Another day with fun route options. We again chose the high route which goes from the Traveller’s Rest Inn in Grasmere, up Jackdaw Crag and over Helm Crag, the image to the right as is the video of Super Typhoons below is from Helm Crag. The high route meets up with the lower C2C route near Mere Beck in a spaghetti mess of trails. The goal is to continue W up towards Greenup Edge. If you have never been to the Lakes, understand that the RAF loves to use those canyons for mountain air warfare training. We spent a lot of time just trying to capture any amount of video of the various planes we saw flying around. I did manage to capture some decent video from Helm Crag, however as we were taking a short break on Lining Crag I looked further down the canyon to see an F15 coming right at me, but below me in elevation. As this F15 (yes it was an F15, and not a Super Typhoon this time around) passed over me, it ended up banking to the right to begin his turn for the next canyon run, this guy was maybe 200 feet above me. I waved as he went zipping by. For the time we were in the canyons of the lake we saw Super Typhoons, F15s, some F35s and F22’s. Apparently there were a few different country’s there training up Ukrainian pilots in the various jets they were being given. I’ve always been a fighter aircraft nerd, and have had some very interesting encounters with various military aircraft while in the mountains. Borrowdale is down in a remote valley of the Lakes, with not a lot of activity, so a nice and quiet night.
Supertyphoons in the Lake District
Day 19: This day probably represents why I chose to walk East to West, the reverse of this leg is day 2 of the C2C, and if you are not ready for a walk like this, the climb coming out of YHA Black Sail could be discouraging, especially if you are having a bit of the English Weather mixed in, which we did. The walk up to Honister Pass was quite easy and enjoyable, and it was warm enough that I just walked up in the rain in trail running clothes. I have a hard time not sweating out in Gore Tex, so if I am going to be wet, just get wet without the non breathable jacket on. Regardless of which direction you come a snack at Honister Slate Mine and Climbing center is worth it. After Honister Pass the path continues along the hills before a big descent down into the Scarth Beck. I will also note that a high route exists that takes you over Hay Stacks, High Crag, High Stiles, and Red Pike before descending to the YHA Ennerdale/Low Gillerthwaite Field House. We continued along the South side of Ennerdale Water before joining with some pavement for those few miles into Ennerdale Bridge. I will take this opportunity to call out the quiet BnB we booked here. We stayed at D Bradley, which there is no website, it’s not on AirBnB or Expedia or booking etc. I just noticed it on GoogleMaps a mile S of Ennerdale Bridge. I reached out and got lucky with a room. It cost £100 for the night with breakfast offered (which is pretty par for the course for all the places we stayed on this walk).
Last Day (sort of): Today we make it to the coast, turn South and walk to the starting finishing point at St Bee’s UK, where we are going to hang out for a couple of days. This segment is outside the Lake District and I would equate this to another “over the hill and through the woods”, however Grandma’s house is a big sea cliff that you walk along. Coming out of D Bradley, the high point of the day is hit pretty quickly on Dent, not really a Wainwright at 352M tall. After Dent, descend through Old Wood into Black How. From here it’s a good bit of paved walking through Cleator and Moor Row. Shortly after the town of Sandwith you reach the sea cliff, turn South for the last five miles of the walk. From the sea cliff, on clear days you can see Isle of Man. Which coming into St Bee’s we had some great weather and could make it out.
Looping back and filling in that hole: But wait, there is more. I really hated that there was an 18 mile gap in this walk that would prevent me from saying “yah I walked it”. So after a house-sit in Pittenweem Scotland we worked our way back down to Windermere to leave some extra stuff. This time I packed my Summits on the Air kit with me and we headed back to Shap. Somewhere in there we also took a side trip down to Kendall to visit the Kendal Mint Cake factory. Yah that was worth it, what we paid direct at the factory would barely buy you three mint cakes at Cotswolds or any of the other outfitters, so uh, if you like Kendal Mint Cake and are planning a long walk take the side trip through Kendal. It was now a couple weeks later in the beginning of October and the weather decided it had given us enough sunny days. We were going to knock out this 17 miles in the cool rainy foggy weather I had read about, but had only experienced in Scotland so far. Coming out of Shap we first encountered the Shap Abbey. The entrance tower mostly remains intact, but there are still lots of stone pillar footings, and stone floors remain. The English Heritage has done a good job with recreating the history of the place. After a little time here wandering around reading about the history it was time to move on towards the hills of the Lakes. There is a nice walk along the Haweswater reservoir, which if you were coming from the West is a nice recovery after coming up and over Kidsty Pike. Turn N and head UP the Kidsty Howes, which was a raging river of a trail by the time we got there and we worked our way up to the ridge and enjoyed the gentler slope to the high point. After a quick break at the Pike we proceeded onwards towards Patterdale. The walk from here is a pretty gentle down slope that goes a few miles all the way to Patterdale with views out over Ullswater and into the valley below. The next day I wanted to do some Summits on the Air, and St Sunday Crag was calling my name, so once again I walked from Patterdale to Grasemere. Since I have already been on Helvellyn twice now I wanted to take that Southern high route. The MWIS had reported that it was supposed to be another wet day, but I somehow managed to sneak a great weather window for the whole day. I could see bad weather all around me, but I just managed to walk with the sun peaking through a hole in the sky on and around me all day. There was some sort of Lakes District running event going on, so the hills were alive with lots of runners. Thanks to all the rain the segment from Grisedale Tarn to Grasmere was flowing pretty good, and a couple of times alternate routes had to be found where the trail crosses the Gill. Once in Grasemere I grabbed the bus to Windermere for Dinner with the rest of my radio buddies who all had been wet in their walks.
That is what is nice though, Wainwright did say it’s worth it to make the walk your own, or as we yanks like to say “Hike your own Hike” (man I hate that phrase). So if you have come along this trip report as part of your planning then I hope you enjoy your walk. If you are just here to read a trip report, thanks for the time! There are a couple more segments with pictures below.
Remember how I said “A plan just gets you to the trailhead?” Well fortunately we had the flexibility to change things up as needed and were not on a time crunch, but the key to any kind of long walking is to have some flexibility, and make it your own.
For those that do not know I love taking snaps of the trail markers/signs I encounter along the way, here is a gallery of the many that are on this walk.
Taking a break from a long road trip to highlight one specific activation. For those not in the know we have been on the road in Au/Nz for 6 weeks now and the trip is winding down with a couple of weeks on the South Island starting later this week. However today I rolled the dice with the weather and decided to head up the North Island High Point. Mt Ruapehu is the proper name for the entire volcano, but the summit block that claims the HP is named Tahurangi. ZL1/MW-001.
nothing to worry about eh? just a pile o rock 😉
This peak has only been activated once, and given some of the other issues I have been having getting contacts (that will be explained in a full write up ar a later date), I was a bit worried about getting this successfully activated on a Monday. Geoff/ZL3GA helped hook me up though with getting the word out to some of the other local cw chasers!
It was also hard finding good approach data for this peak, so well lets just roll the dice and see how we fare!
Most write ups did talk about walking up under the ski lifts and that works well, but is not the highlight of the hike. Once at the top of the High Noon chair head to the right/Easterly. There is a creek/ice field that does need to be crossed. Today there was a decent crossing however in my mind tbis was the crux and a bit unnerving. The runout would not have been good, I did find a place further downstream to cross without ice. The next goal is to make the shoulder that runs SW to NE. Take the time to notice the amazing slab that goes from about 2500M to a cliff band around 2650M. The slab is very sticky, and I found it easy for going both up and down in a straight line. Most of the tracks I found avoid the slab, but if you are comfortable on rock its safe and fun. The next bit oh fun is a lot of switchbacks, or some mild class IV climbing, but this is the steepest part of the approach.
Top out on the false summit and the last 100M is pretty mellow, do note though there is about 20-25M of a spine before the shoulder gets really mild. The drop off on both sides is a bot precipitous 🙂
The view from up here is amazing, there is a huge lake down in the crater, a cone on the other side of the lake, and a few more summits as well. The mountain did burp a couple of times while I was up there and that was a touch unnerving, but I did not see anything spewing.
This was my best activation so far of the trip, I managed to get 9 contacts total across VHF 20/30/40M (not used to getting so few, but as noted above another story for a much bigger post).
So WAY back in 2019 I had planned to hike the West Highland Way in spring of 2020 and sprinkle in some Summits on the Air as well. I think we know what happened to that though. Since I was working a pretty good job at the time I had booked a a combination of some wild camping and pretty posh stays, and at the beginning of pandemic all but one of those places had agreed to refund the bookings. The Bridge of Orchy hotel was the one place that would not do a full refund and 2022 was the last year they were willing to push the stay back (kind of a “use it or lose it” thing). So with that in mind I put a date kind of in the middle of the end of September and took my original plan to build forward and backwards.
For those that do not know the WHW is about 100 miles long starts in the suburbs of Glasgow, walks north along Loch Lomond and then heads up into the Scottish Highlands, most people take 5-7 days to do, and if I were just doing the trail that would have been a fair assessment for me too, but I was also bagging munros to play radio. So my plan called for about 11-12 days (12 days if I had opted for a side trip up into the Mamores range to circle around and come across the CMD Arete to finish on Ben Nevis before descending into Fort William.
Day 1: Milngavie to Drymen (Camping): 17 – Sept
Woke up at the Hostel in Glasgow and hit the train early. I needed to be at the train station in Milngavie (pronounced “Mull-Guy”) to leave my extra clothes/luggage with AMS. They were going to hold and deliver to Fort William on the 28th. Once that was all sorted, I worked my way to the marker that is the start of the WHW. There were already a few groups of people amassing the area as they were getting their pictures in front of the obelisk. I grabbed some breakfast, and a last coffee at the nearby Costa, and hit the trail.
some lone lost forgotten hiker
Walking the first bit is sort of urban, but is not unlike some walking I had recently done in Wales. It is quiet, it is a nice urban path, but in the trees and quiet none-the-less. Keep in mind, this was the suburbs of Glasgow and not in the city centre, so that did help with the quiet factor. You experience what you might normally see at a local town park, the trail runners, the dog walkers (lots of fun dogs to say hello to this morning) and the occasional mountain biker. This is definitely the beginning of the hike though, everyone is clean, everyone is fresh and ready to hit the trail. Within an hour though you are finally getting out of town, and starting to get into some of the more rural areas. Once you get out of town, you really start to experience some strange and interesting stuff, here was a lost hiker that never seemed to get past this one location.
About an hour before Glengoyne (more on that later) I came across a familar name, the “John Muir Way”. Wow so I have now walked the entire John Muir in California, parts of it in Tennessee and now parts of it in Scotland. Even cooler that the West Highland way is considered part of the “International Appalachian Trail”.
A few hours out of town I made it to a distillery that is just off the Way called “Glengoyne”. Keep in mind I knew this distillery was there, and I have been there before, so I headed on up because it was time to refill the water bottle with some of their natural spring water and I wanted to pick up a little nippy bottle for the end of the trail. I scored this 7.5cl of 18yo scotch, found a good place to carry it so it would not break and headed on. A bit further I started to find some of the honesty boxes, this is the one part of the trail where cash is still required. So far tap and pay (thank you Covid?) has done well, but those honesty boxes do need some cash. Good news is I did bring some along because an Ice Cream was definitely sounding good at this time of the day. The last couple of miles of day one was along a roadway. It was kind of funny as I was swallowed up by a large guided group of folks who were doing the full luggage transfer, carry a light day pack of snacks and water method. Nothing wrong with that, but this groups’ guides had definitely let the group get VERY spread out. As I was walking into the driveway for Drymen Camping one of those hikers thought I was her guide and asked me “how much further till we stop for lunch, I’m tired and hungry”. Well funny enough I had been listening to their guides a while back saying they were going to do lunch up in Drymen. “Oh well I am stopping here but it sounds like ya’ll are eating lunch about a miile further up the road”. It sounds like that group was doing a full 20 miler all the way to Balmaha for day one. Ouch, I was perfectly happy doing my 12-13 miles and just strolling into a relaxing evening camping.
Drymen camping was a nice place, the gentleman (family?) that runs the place had expanded to support larger tents as a result of Covid so on top of the small spots (which was a bunch of us in 1 and 2p tents) up above were some of the big 6-8 people tents as well as some campervans and overland rigs. I do respect the love of campervanning (#vanlife in the US) that the UK folks do. Something I would experience a lot over the days to come.
Day 2: Drymen over Conic Hill to Rowardennan 18-Sept
I wanted an early start because today was going to be a SOTA day with my first taste of combining some decent miles, a hill climb AND an activation. I was also looking forward to finally breaking in my new SotaBeams carbon 6. After having some almost not-activations in Wales I reached out to SotaBeams when in Keswick to get a Carbon 6 ordered and delivered to Glasgow before hitting the walk. I pounded some breakfast (while there are very few bag/dehydrated meals I like in the US, I really became a fan of Adventure Food’s breakfast and veggie meals. Their Knusper Meusli is probably my favorite breakfast and you can have it warm or hot. Anyway I was on the trail I think before most people were even up, but I wanted to be on top of Conic Hill by 10am for my activation to ensure I had time to get down to Balmaha for lunch and make the Rowardennan Youth Hostel with plenty of time to chill that evening.
Conic Hill off in the distance
Once I got past Drymen and was getting further into the Trossachs, the environment around me was really starting to change and turn more green. Plus I was staring to get into some easy climbing. That said I was also encountering more sheep/cow/range lands. Plenty of forest lands were encountered too. The final push up Conic Hill was not as hard as I was thinking, but the walking in Wales and the Lakes did have me ready for almost anything :D. At first I was thinking I could just run this activation on 2m, but I really wanted to break in my new mast, so I broke out the MTR2 (Thank you N6IZ, another story for another time, but I normally use an MTR3b_LCD) and setup in a way to not interfere with the ever grown crowds on the summit. I even drew the interest of some drone pilots who were not sure what was going on with my wire and tall mast.
After an hour I managed 13 contacts between 2m, 20m and 40m, but was ready to head down into Balmaha as it was getting crowded on top.
Loch Lomond from Conic Hill
The walk to Rowardennan was pretty uneventful, still playing with both an (sub)urban interface, and getting into the hills while also walking along the Southern end of Loch Lomond. I swear though that it smelled very sea like at this end of the Loch.
So once at the Rowardennan area I do want to make a comment about “The Clansmen”. As a walker you want to get there no later than 6pm. They only want to cater to the clients in the hotel they are attached to. I was able to get in and get some food there, and there was a nice view for sunset, but yah get their early, call ahead or just know that the Youth Hostel (if that is where you are staying ) does serve dinner, or just be ready to have your own food. I was not ready to break into my other camp meals yet so I opted for an early dinner at the Clansmen. The views from the Youth Hostel are quite nice as well!
Day 3: Ben Lomond (SOTA day) 19-Sept
So, this could technically be considered a “zero day” since I was not moving forward, however I was doing a day dedicated to just SOTA. Today my goal was Ben Lomond. Another early start was the plan, had a decent breakfast at the YHA and then headed back the 1/2 mile to the trailhead for Ben Lomond. Walking up was a bit of a dreary morning, not that crazy “Scotland rain” I had heard so much about, but dreary none-the-less. Not that I could see them the crowds ahead of me, but once I made it above treeline, the fog was making the visibility “shite”, and I could tell there was a decent amount of folks ont he trail ahead of me. This was my first (second actually) taste of Scottish munro walking; lots of stone steps, straight up, no meandering, just pitter patter, lets get at ‘er. I went ahead and setup just off the summit area, but still at the top block (something that would be a mistake as the day went on). This was another very successful activation though netting 29 contacts on 20/40 on the MTR2 and I even broke out the QCX mini (17m) for a few contacts including one VE (North American) QSO. It was worth it do the extra band for sure. As I went past noon, I noticed the crowd on the summit was actually quite big AND the winds were threatening to knock my makeshift mast supports down, so after 90 minutes of activation time I decommissioned the setup and walked back down the hill. Oh btw, did I mention today was the day of the Queen’s funeral? It was a bank holiday for everyone in the UK, so as a result all the non-royalists(?) from the area decided okay, lets go walk a hill. I was definitely swimming downstream as a million of my not-so-closest friends were heading up to the summit. All in all a great “zero-day” to do some Summits on the Air and get some hill walking in as the day did turn out to be quite sunny and enjoyable.
That evening at dinner I ended up eating with a couple of gentlemen who were also staying in my bunk room at the YH, Roy and his brother Tom from the Bay Area (California). They were both retired and were off on one of their annual adventures together. It was an fun/odd mix because while I was having some big days here and there my zero days would allow the three of us to keep bumping into each other as time went on.
Day 4: Rowardennan to Crianlarich: 20-Sept
Day four was going to be my biggest day of the trip and I was a little nervous. To be fair I did have a strange 18 mile day in Wales but today was going to be a 20+ mile day overall.
Hit up one last breakfast at the YH and then hit the trail. There is a side trail that takes you directly up from the hostel to the WHW, so no real backtracking. The walk here up until the Inversnaid Hotel is along Loch Lomond, and is quite pretty. I was unable to get a good picture of the Inversnaid falls, but it is pretty impressive. that I can say. It is worth it to grab a snack (second breakfast) and top off your water because from here the fun really begins. Note that shortly after the Inversnaid hotel you have an option; a high route and a low route. The high route is pretty much a doubletrack forest road. The low route (so I have read and was told by folks) is this crazy almost rock climbing up and down affair that runs along Loch Lomond. As noted I had read how rough it was so I, and this other couple I bumped into decided to take the high route. The high route reminded me a lot of walking through some of the coastal areas of Oregon, very rainforest like. The trail does drop to lake level the last few miles of Loch Lomond and it in some ways reminded me of the West Coast Trail up in British Columbia. Off camber ladders, crazy bridges, and some rock scrambling. I made it to Beinglas farm around 2pm and was not really wanting to wait for them to open up at 3pm, so I opted to head on. I had read earlier in the day while walking that Beinglas’ lease was not being renewed next year so what seems to have been a staple for campers and hikers wanting a mid day treat was probably going to be no more (or at least a new/different form) in the years to come. Beware the Willy Wonky Hobbit tunnel that goes under the ScotRail line. It starts out okay for average height folks, but starts to get shorter in the middle and by the end you are bear/crab/crouch/duck walking to get to the end :D. From here on out the trail runs through a farm land with plenty of sheep, but looks East over the valley that is past Crianlarich. I had booked the YHA in Crianlarich (I really do like the YH’s) but this one I can tell was not going to meet the standards that Rowardennan had set.. The room was nice enough but there was mold on the ceiling, and they were starting to run short on things. The Rod and Reel restaurant is really good, I ate there both nights and enjoyed both meals, even had the Steak Pie on the second night (I’m normally a vegetarian but lets just say that the food in EU is so much better than the US that meat made it’s way back into my diet :D).
So, I am just going to set this out now and say this is maybe the 3rd hardest day of hiking ever and my second hardest SOTA day ever. Mt Dubois (W6/WH-001) will probably always be my hardest SOTA day but this day was a very close second. My round trip mileage from Crianlarich was just shy of 13 miles. Four miles was the walk to/from the Ben More Trailhead and Crianlarich.
Once you actually get to the Trailhead, that is when the real fun starts. (see below) The first 2000 feet of elevation gain is pretty much stone steps that are on a steep grade, steep enough that looking down the steps gave me a bit of vertigo. It was a typical weather day this day. The last 500 feet of elevation was in the clouds, and there was no visibility. Given the wonky weather (pretty windy and misty) I decided to go for a VHF only approach. I was also still far enough South that Glasgow was in reach. Both summits did qualify on VHF. The hike down the backside and then back up to Stob Binnein was more of the same, steep down and steep up. The REAL fun of this hike was for the downroute back to the road. No I did not go back over Ben More but followed the goat/sheep trail that is on the Western slope all the way down. The stairs would have been easier :D. The total down route from the col in the middle took me about as long as both up routes. Given the moldy ceilings on the YHA, once I did get back to town I marched straight to the Best Western and booked a nicer room for the night. However I did take advantage of the laundry at the YHA before pulling all my stuff out and relocating. Again another night at the Rod and Reel for some good beers and the Steak Pie I spoke about above.
Yes those are stepsOh look the summit is in the clouds
Day 6: Crianlarich to Tyndrum
Today was supposed to be a walk to Tyndrum with a SOTA peak, but I was still pretty beat from the 20 mile day plus the 4600 feet 13 mile double SOTA day. Today was just a good 7 mile jaunt with a history lesson and some cool valleys along the way as we just start getting further into the Highlands. Once you make it Tyndrum the Green Welly is a great place to restock. I will note that Tyndrum is at some sort of crossroads as it is a pretty busy town. The walk in is pleasant enough as you walk along the stream (Crom Allt). Not that Tyndrum is anything more than a small town, but it is a slight contrast to the villages of the past few nights, as it was quite a busy town. There are a couple of big hotels, quite a few campgrounds and there is still the iconic/idyllic old world style inns too. There are a couple of wild camping spots between “By the Way” and crossing the A road that goes through Tyndrum. I took todays extra free time to snag a massage (she is reachable on WhatsApp), do a little restocking and just relax before pushing on the next leg of the trip.
Day 7: Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy and Beinn Dorain (Hike and SOTA day)
The Bridge of Orchy
All rested up and ready to move on, I grab an early breakfast and hit the trail. Technically there are two options (depending on where you stay), walk right through town, or just head out towards the “By the Way” campsite and pickup the trail. Here the trail starts getting more remote and into the Highlands. The valleys are surrounded by larger hills. I was only going about 7 miles to Bridge of Orchy Hotel (the one that prompted me to run this trip this fall). So, you follow the A82 road a bit but then head out into farm country, and the scenery is beautiful at this rate. I cannot remember the name of the lodging along the way but right before the Kinglass River is a neat little camp site way out in the country. They have a store and depending on the time of day you walk through there second breakfast or lunch is an option. So I made the Hotel around 11am and took this opportunity to offload about half my weight to scale down to just what I needed for heading up and doing some SOTA. This was another one of those straight up trails, although I use the phrase “trail” loosely. Depending on how early you head up, or how late you want to stay up it is possible to get two activations. I went after Beinn Dorain but as noted given enough time (or the desire to come down later) then CS-025 would add about an hour of walking overall (plus the activaiton time). If I had stayed an extra day in Bridge of Orchy the two-fer would have been worth it.
The activation was going well, I qualified the with the MTR2 and some VHF action, but something was itching me to break out the QCX mini today. I netted 12 contacts just on the QCX mini over a 40 minute window including TM2SOTA. Most of the contacts were to the southern end of the EU continent including Spain, Italy and even Ukraine. I took my sweet time with the QCX since I was not going after the second summit. Overall a fun activation.
Bridge of Orchy HotelHad a lot of fun with this guy todayLooking down upon Bridge of Orchy
Day 8: Bridge of Orchy to Glencoe Mountain Resort 24-Sept
Another short day, only 11 miles and no SOTA. The point of today was to just get to Glencoe Mountain Resort which is across from Kingshouse Inn. Today was the first real autumal day of the year. The air was crisp, the temperature was pleasant, the sun was shining and there were some clouds in the area. A joyous breeze. Inveroran is just over the hill from Bridge of Orchy and offers a quick refreshment, a short ways along the country road and the Way heads over a bridge and heads up the old Drovers road. Not sure how I missed this peak when I was doing my planning but a few miles from GMR is yet another peak I cannot pronounce Stob a’Choire Odhair. This 6 pointer is accessible directly from the West Highland Way. I almost went after this peak, but for some reason just kept enjoying the saunter along the beautiful day. GMR was a two day stop over with the goal of two Summits. A few shots of just how inspiring this area was (at least for me). No roads, mountains, and walking an old Drover’s road.
Day 9: Meall a’Bhuiridh (SOTA Day) 25-Sept
SOTA day with the goal of two peaks Meall a’Bhuiridh and Criese. The goal was to head up the lift to get a little head start on the walk head over the col and scale up what (on a topo map) looked like a probably a hard class 3 or maybe an easy class 4 to the next ridge line. Mother Nature had something else in mind. A storm system was moving in and the winds were already starting to rip. Rain was also coming down sideways :D. The winds were such that one side of my body was completely wet while the other side was dry. With that in mind and the wx turning quickly I opted to go ahead and just work Meall a’Bhuiridh instead. That was a smart move as I only mustered one VHF QSO, so I did find a place where the winds were not going to rip up my mast and worked this peak with 17m. I managed 7 QSOs in 15 minutes, tore the setup down quickly and started my way down the peak the way I came up with the winds now howling. On the way down the winds were ripping hard enough to blow me off my feet on one occasion. Strong enough to actually throw me a couple of feet through the air. After some crab walking and lots of bracing I managed to get all the way off the hill in one piece, but yet another epic day on this fun little adventure! By the time I was back down to GMR the winds were ripping and the rain was sheeting hard so I opted to move into one of the little hobbit huts and dry everything out.
Day 10: GMR to wild camping 26-Sept
So, after having finished a few good sota peaks and realizing it had been a few years since I finished a named long trail (as opposed to multi-day segments of long trails) I shifted my focus now on the rest of the walk to Fort William (okay it is only two days away), so with a new day and the weather being pleasant again, no crazy Scottish weather the goal was to make Kinlochleven for lunch and then head up into the wild country to have one last night of wild camping. The Way follows the road for the first few miles and then turns up into the high country on a trail feature aptly named “the Devil’s Staircase”. I lifted this from the Internet as a history of the naming.
Between the 18th and 20th century, many people in Glen Coe have been believed to have been ‘claimed by the Devil.’ This is because many workers at the reservoir, after failing to return home after a winter’s night at the local pub, would have struggled the steep path of the route. This is why the nickname ‘Devil’s Staircase’ came about.
This part of the trail is very scenic, and does give you that Highland scenery that one hopes to see. For what it is worth this many days in heading up the Staircase was pretty easy, and for anyone else even on a weeklong itinerary this number of days in the jaunt up the stairs is not going to be that tough, so do not let the name scare you.
From here you descend down the valley into Kinlochleven over a couple of miles. The trail is nice walking so it should not take very long. You do need to get in before 1500 hours as that is when most shops do shut their kitchen for mid day break. I found a nice sandwich shop, and even enjoyed a milkshake with my lunch. Kinlochleven also hosts the local Ice Climbing centre. It might be worth a visit if you are staying in town or have the time.
My last campsite of the Way, a very pleasant night
After lunch in Kinlochleven I moved back to the trail and kept moving along into the backcountry with a specific location in mind. Here the trail does climb some out of town, and then chills to a gradual ascent. I found a flat creek amd trailside setup in a great location that was somewhat wind protected, however IF I had kept going another mile I would have been able to pitch behind a rock wall from an abandoned shepherd’s hill home.
Dinner was pleasant, however I finally came to the realization that it is time to finally retire my snowpeak gigapower (it took 30 minutes to boil 1.5L of water, and no I am not getting a Jetboil. Time for an MSR Pocket Rocket). The sunset and surrounding views for the evening were amazing. Being though in livestock grazing land I found it humourous all night cows on both sides of the hill were constantly mooing back and forth to each other. Not enough to keep one awake, but those couple of times I did wake up for a bathroom break I could still hear them wailing away and their bells clanging.
Day 11: Wild Camping to Fort William (~14 miles) 27 – Sept
Last day of the walk, another great day in the Highlands. I had no real schedule and did not need to be anywhere, so I was not in too much of a hurry to get moving, however by 9am plenty of walkers were already moving past me. I am curious when these folks left whereever they started from. If they left Kinlochleven it must have been around 7am as I was two hours past the village. Anyway, with a fresh batch of individuals to walk with I proceeded along the last bit of the Way, but not in too much of a hurry. I wanted to soak up these last few miles of Highlands. So as I noted “yesterday” a mile or so past my camp I found what would have been a perfect place to hide from the winds (had their been any, fortunately last night only brought mild breezes).
The foundation of a pen would have made another good wind break stay out of the house though.
For the first bit of the morning we walked in the wide open valley with views West towards Glencoe and a reservoir or two. However the trail does eventually turn North and you start that last little climb past the Mamore range for the final few miles push into Glen Nevis. Right befote the final drop there is an old Iron Age fort that is worth the 20 minute side trip. If you read the information board, what you see, and what you read do make sense. Also from this high spot you can see Ben Nevis (on a clear day) to your North across the valley. Plus the view up the Valley as your nestled between the Mamores and Nevis range does help give you that small feeling that comes with being in the mountains. Once back on the trail it is all downhill to Glen Nevis and then pavement into Fort William! What a walk
The happy hiker sitting with the statue at the end in Fort William
Epilogue:
Tbis trip was well worth the wait, and is one of the few hikes I would love to do again, or at least consider going on past to also add the Great Glen Way. It is possible even without a luggage transfer service to put a posh trip together, but doing the combination of tent nights (4 total) a couple nights in the Hobbit Huts, the Youth Hostels and the two hotels was a new experience for me. However knowing what I know now, and skipping the SOTA factor a completely wild camping experience would be the plan. Trekking through the UK the past few weeks and specifically the WHW in the relaxed manner in which I did it was quite the enjoyable experience. The food here was tasty. The added two years also helped to improve the solar comditions to get those further daytime QSOs. I also have a new found fondness for the QCX mini. I had plenty of fun with it in Tahoe, but hearing all those Balkan and Southern European stations blasting in was a nice new change, the couple of times I did get a NA QSO also made that particular activation more fun.
Decided to do an overnight for two peaks in the Sierra
Disclaimer: The two peaks I am going to talk about here do require some offtrail/overland navigation skills, and have some high consequence results if something goes wrong. This is a trip report of my experience, and is in no way beta for you to go and tackle these peaks. If you take this data and get hurt, or your loved ones get hurt that is on you period..FWIW I did cut up my hand pretty good on a fall I had while descending Lightning Mountain. In both cases these peaks are thin spine rock piles; one being a large pile of talus and boulders, the other is decomposing volcanic material. Also note these approaches are steep, think avalanche terrain steep. The approach to Disaster Peak was in the Donnell Fire zone from 2018, there is a lot of fire damage along the way including sink holes forming from burnt out tree root systems. Sink holes that could give out and definitely put a damper on your day if you fell in. I had NO cell service from either peak at all, and I was not getting any APRS beacons until I was up high enough to hit something to my west. That said, enjoy the read!
So I have this map of SOTA summits between Carson Pass (HWY 88) and technically the Northern border of Yosemite, but HWY 108/Sonora Pass for all intent and purpose that I have been working off of primarily the past two years. The area I have primarily focussed on this year is along the PCT corridor South of HWY 4. So far this year I had hit up Bloods Ridge, Antelope Peak, Mineral Mountain, Deadwood and a couple of numbered peaks in the area. I also missed 5-6 weeks of hiking in Sept/Oct because of a knee injury sustained doing Tinkers Knob/Mt Lincoln. Funny too, that was probably the easiest hike I had done to that point this summer. Here we are in mid Nov though and my knee was feeling good again five weeks after a meniscectomy, the weather is still plenty warm, there is plenty of sunshine, and the last remnants of any early season storms from back in September were long gone. The only signs of snow were left over patches from the previous long Winter season. So LETS HIT THE TRAIL and get a nice fall overnight in!
A new sign put up after the Donnell Fire in 2018
I have had my eye on three particular peaks that are all in close proximity, and oddly enough two of them are accessed on the same trail (but from a different direction) as my approach to Arnot peak, specifically the Disaster Creek Trail. The two in question for this trip are Lightning Mountain, and Disaster Peak. The third peak I will have to go after some other time. Compared to some of the other peaks I had done around this area these two peaks were right off a trail, and the on vs off trail ratio would be about 50/50 for once. For context, Antelope Peak was a 15 mile day for me, only 2 miles were on trail, rest of the time I was picking my way across open fields, manzanita and willow thickets and whatever else the mountain could throw my way. This area is the Carson Iceberg Wilderness area and overnights do require a permit. As a day trip (and this is totally doable as a long single day two-fer) no permit needed. The Trailhead is off of Stanislaus FS Road 7N83.
I started heading up the Disaster Creek trail at 8am, and the walking was pretty easy. In 2018 the Donnell fire ravaged some of this area pretty bad, there are plenty of large trees that have fallen as a result and even more on the verge of falling. I stopped at what I think was a Jeffery Pine to count the rings, and made it to 100 but was only 2/3 of the way across, and was easily a 10 foot diameter tree. I’d noticed some recent tracks along the trail, some that looked real recent, but the cattle grazers had already pulled out for the year, and I could tell I was going to be totally alone in the wilderness this weekend =).
Strange location for a fire ring. Not near any trail
Once I had my basecamp setup I started looking for a way up, and wouldn’t you know there was an animal use trail right behind my camp, so up I went along a shoulder that I had planned as my approach for Lightning Mountain. The approach was approximately 1500 feet and was 3 miles each way. I was in the trees until 8500 feet. Oddly enough along the way I found a fire ring in the strangest place ever at 8300 feet. No real trail, not very flat but someone had spent some time here. After this weekend I actually wondered if the owners stay with the cattle most of the summer.
Top of Lightning, looking south from whence i came. Yosemite is down there somewhere
The last few hundred feet is where the pucker factor starts, but not for the full duration. Depending on which shoulder you ascend, you come to a crumbly rocky knob that has bad consequences on one side and devastating consequences on the other. Choose your route, be choosy with your footing and proceed. For the next little bit you just kinda traverse over to the saddle at the base of the rock structure that makes up the summit. The summit is long and spiny, and a little bit of class 2/3 that is crumbly and slidy so again, be careful, and be choosy and test before you weight your foot placement.
There is no cell service (or AT&T) on this peak, so I was relying on APRS to handle my spotting. Back in the summer ON6ZQ did some fun hackery to put all SOTA activators on aprs.fi, and low and behold because I was hitting the summit, a welcome message appeared on APRS. :D. I could hear some guy squawking away on another summit up in North Lake Tahoe area, so I waited 20 minutes to get a QSO with him. Kind of a mistake since he was not actually doing SOTA, but it was at least my first QSO for the first activation on this peak. Overall today I ended up with 1 2m contact 7 on 40m with an S2S, and 4 on 20m. After about 2 hours on the summit, decided it was time to head down mostly retracing my steps. Back at that dicey knob, I did end up losing my footing in one spot, but not on the steeper section, but because the rock was all crumbly and such I did manage to tear up my hand some.
Sunset where I camped. I picked a high perch to have some views.
Camp was camp, nothing to speak of here, but I did have a nice sunset glow (I am looking East in the photo I posted above).
Next morning my plan was simple, get up, break down camp and go find the trail to Disaster Peak; todays peak would be ~2350 feet of gain and another 3 miles each way. I would leave my pack at the bottom, and normally I would say this is probably not a good idea, and I’ll admit there were a few times I was like “damn, hope there are no bears today down in the valley”, but it is what I did. I wonder if the scent of used TP in a ziplock would ward animals away from my pack 😉 (pack it in, pack it out). Reality is I did not bother bringing any extra food on this trip, so I’d eaten my allotment already. Once I found the use trail to Disaster peak (more on that in a minute), found a somewhat hidden place under a tree to park my pack, grabbed my Z-lite sit pad and the case I use to carry my MTR clipped it to my belt, killed a liter of water and went on. (yes, I set off for a 6 mile hike on a hot summer, I mean fall day with no water).
Current SOTA kit
The nice thing about the setup I have, is it weighs < 2lbs. Super easy to just carabiner to a belt loop. I have a trapped EFHW made with 30awg silicon wrapped wire that a buddy built. This thing is LIGHT, the MTR3b, and my 1400mah battery which I am running an experiment on to see just how many operating hours I can get out of it. The battery may be the heaviest part of the kit
So, I mentioned “use trail” before, what i had read was a hard to follow use trail was only partially true, and this was a trip report from well before last years fire. The trail once I did find it was actually a well used pathway that was easy to follow, plus had its fair share of cairns along the way. That was until I got about half way and walked into one of the areas that was damaged pretty bad by the fire. I had never seen the results of a fire that burned so hot it burned out the root system of a tree, but here you go:
You definitely had to be careful because those roots ended up being sink holes, and if you were not aware of where you were stepping it would be easy to cause a sink hole to happen and you would be done hiking for the day. Once past the burn area, you just round a shoulder/corner, and it does get a bit exposed for a minute or two, but you round a corner and your destination is there in full view. At this rate, just work your way up the hill as best you can. In some cases there are some cattle trail, and it does look like if you attain the Southern shoulder the jaunt along that shoulder to the peak is a much easier ascent then straight up the gut. I also saw plenty of camps/fire rings in some more strange places, nothing like what I saw the day before, but strange enough..
On the summit, it was your typical activation, since I was further East on this summit no one could hear me in the central valley, I did pick up someone out in Yerington NV though. Also managed another 11 HF contacts on CW, more 20m today then 40m, so another successful activation of a virgin peak.
Takeaways: Always enamored by the fact that I have studied this area extensively on the maps, and you think it is all spread out, but it is not. I drove some 200+ miles to ultimately access two peaks that were 35 miles crowfly from my home.
Do the cattle grazers stay in the field all season, and where can I sign up for that gig without going out and buying a bunch of cows? 😀 (and does it pay as well as my current job?)
Here it is towards the end of April, spring is in full swing in some areas, however the Sierras are still coated with feet of snow, but the mountains in NV are calling and open with easy access. So for the past two years I have been operating with a KX2 and that is an amazing rig, full of features, and I am sure i am only scratching that surface, and my kit weight has varied over that two years as I have added/subtracted batteries changed up antenna configurations etc, but it does come in around 5lb.
All that said last year I went thru level 1 of CWops and started doing some CW on my activations. I immediately went from hoping to get 10 contacts, to always getting more then 10 contacts when I started doing CW as the bulk of my activation. I’ll still hit some 40m SSB because some of my friends still are SSB. Why I brought up old news, is that going to cw opened up 30m for me, and on those weekends when 20/40 are in use for some contest, that can make an activation a bit more challenging. What I have found with 30m is I still get the same chasers I do on 40/20, but the signal reports are not as strong, with the exception for W5N, and W7A which are stronger. W7O is down in the 3s and W7W is in the 4s for me and I can consistently hit W0C. While I am not saying 30m will always get me the most number of contacts all the time, it will at least get the job done, and the regular chasers will do their best to work you, especially if they know you are mono-banding.
About this same time the NASOTA slack channel really started to grow. A few of those fellow SOTA folks are kit builders, and love tinkering with their rigs etc. K6ARK has added a touch sensitive keyer directly into his MTR3b as an example, since then he even built a micro-pixie with built in matching unit and direct attach end fed for a SOTA capable rig that he has used on an activation that weighs in the 3oz range. KT5X out in NM is always looking to make a lighter kit as well, and often writes the NASOTA groups.io forum with his updates. KE6MT has also been a fountain of information on the builder front and has helped me immensely (he better, I’m his associate association manager ;P ). That said, I took it upon my self to order a 30m QCX (from qrp-labs.com) with the intention of using that as a light-weight SOTA rig on those days where I want to do a lot of miles, and I may be shooting for a lighter pack to focus on miles while still carrying the 10essentials, or I am time limited. The Black Diamond Distance 15l fills the bill well, and I used it on a recent co-activation with Rex on Waterhouse Peak. Maybe I will be one of the first SOTA guys to do an UltraThon AND an activation on the same event. (doubtful, but one can dream).
My current kit:
KX2
4.5mah BioEnno battery (I get ~11 hours of operation on a single charge with the KX2 at 10w)
LNR Trail Friendly, or QRPGuys 20/30/40 Vertical antenna
That five pound mark is not too bad overall, and I know folks who carry more, and even with that list, there are some changes I could make to get it lighter yet. End Feds are great just draping off the side of the mountain as a “sloper” and in some cases, some peaks already have things you can use to help go inverted vee (like tree limbs or no longer used antenna towers). So I can drop the fishing rod all together in the future.
I have set my goal to be less then 2lb overall because I have a few hikes I want to try as a “HaRunk” (ham radio trail run). So I have set out on how to accomplish this mission, enter the QCX and a new kit
I have chased a few folks with the QCX from the QTH, but now it was finally time to use the QCX as my activation rig. It was on Easter Sunday and on a day that 30m propagation was not great and I was not on summit till noon. SotaWatch showed that I was the first spot in over two hours. I managed seven QSO over 25 minutes and then my battery decided it was time to shut off for recharge (oops..been testing a lot, forgot to check levels). Either way it was a successful activation on a unique summit. Full disclosure it was also the first time I have done an activation without using the decoder, and I managed to get a good copy on all those who called me whom I could hear, so I am getting better there too. Contacts included: AG6VA, K0RS, KR7RK, W7USA, WA9STI, W7GA and K7RJ. According to RBN I was reaching the VE6WZ beacon up in Calgary, approximately 700 miles. Last time I checked, I was putting out 2watts of power, but that was before I really tuned my EFHW. On the approach drive in *4×4 road* I managed to make it to within a mile of the summit, but overall this is a drive up summit. Either way, b/c I am in run training, the 1 mile 400 foot elevation just helps with the training, and I do my best thinking when I’m walking (more on that below). Those structures you see on the summit proper are from past deployments I think, all the radio towers, cell towers, and TV towers have been moved to other nearby peaks, overall (at least on 30m) this was an RF quiet peak.
Now on to the kit you see pictured above: (Phase one of weight reduction)
When I started tinkering with the idea of a single band antenna I went and snagged a qrpguys NoTune end fed HW antenna. I was still lugging that big 4.5mah battery, so I am thinking next up there will be to go snag an 1800-2200mah LiFE/LiPo battery; that should give me 3-5 hours of operation overall. Weight difference there is almost a pound. I love having that mono band EFHW antenna, but I was concerned that banging the PCB around on rocks, or letting it hit snow, or snag on a limb could be detrimental. While I was hiking out, it dawned on me, that all I really needed from that PCB is the transformer and capacitor, and some way to shove it inside the QCX enclosure or protect it another way. I actually went back to the QRP guys page b/c I’d heard rumors they were making a self contained matchbox version of the same antenna, and sure enough they have a mini version. Purchase complete, hopefully here by the end of the week. That actually helps me solve a couple of issues as I can use the matchbox to cover the opening that removing the BNC from the QCX will create. I will also be able to use that to wire the components direct to the QCX PCB. (I am just a rookie at the tinkerer thing, so things will probably look/be clunky at first). I will have to plug the hole on the matchbox for the BNC, so a new problem to solve, but not major. Honestly the best outcome is to somehow figure out if I can get the full setup inside the QCX enclosure, and then tap two screws for counterpoise and antenna thru the enclosure. I will also be able to roll the wire (42’6″) around the QCX case as a winder. Moving to this will also eliminate the need for a feedline, or a BNC/BNC coupler and with lighter battery will help achieve that 2lb goal I am shooting for. I am hoping to have that all setup for the Lake District SOTA weekend in the UK, as I am looking to do some mileage on my first day over in Wales to snag Snowdon and YLlwedd before heading up to Ambleside. I may actually break it on Mt Shasta the weekend prior to heading out.
Once i get the new changes put in, I’ll start doing some power drain measurements and add those to a followup post. This is the part of SOTA that makes Ham Radio fun, the tinkering and playing and seeing what can be accomplished with small gear.
So let me re-iterate: I do not condone leaving the 10-essentials at home, but we always have room for improvement in reducing pack weight. Given enough time and creativity really coming up with ways to build a walkabout kit with SOTA gear that borders on featherweight on the back is in and of itself a fun exercise.
SOTA Activation of a peak I’d been eyeing for a while
So for those that have been following me in anyway know I’ve had a desire to knock off all the peaks that are in some proximity to the Tahoe Rim Trail. This was also the final weekend of the W7N bonus weekend (W6 cuts out on 3/15, that is in the process of getting updated though). There are three possible ways to get to this peak, and as a day hike, all are kind of ambitious. Doing this when there is still a good amount of snow on the ground amps up that factor more.
So the three possible ways to access this peak are from Tahoe Meadows on the Mt Rose hwy, Spooner summit to the South of US-50. Both of these are primarily the Tahoe Rim Trail. I chose to use the Flume Trail/Tunnel Creek route to go up, then hop over towards Twin Lakes. According to my CalTopo route this should have been ~5.23 miles each way and 2722 feet elevation gain. Mt Rose to Herlan peak is ~10 miles each way and has a fair bit of up and down (+2050, -1830 elevation change). Not quite ready to drop a marathon on snowshoes since most of the stuff up high was fluffy and untracked. Half Marathon? No problem.
I have done my fair share of 10-15 mile snowshoe hikes, but the 2600 foot elevation gain was adding to the pucker factor some, fortunately DST and the Spring equinox has kicked in, so we’re already north of 12 hours of sunlight per day. I hit the trailhead approximately 9am and already started making shortcuts across the snow to decrease distance. I really do love snowshoeing when there is a good base, do not have to worry about damaging existing trails. Down low the snow was pretty firm, so I was making some good time. Funny though the higher I went the fewer snowshoe/shoe postholing tracks were present. About 2 miles up I was now breaking trail though on my own.
Even in the winter roads and trails still look obvious so navigating was pretty easy. When I reached the top of Tunnel Creek trail/the Saddle I opted to stay along the ridge instead of dropping down to Twin Lakes. So it was spring time, and not sure why I’d not considered this in my planning, but, I was starting to notice more and more bear tracks going between trees.
The uptrack ended up taking a bit longer then I’d hoped, especially since i was making good time earlier on, but off trail, and deep snow being what it is, it took me longer to go that last 1000 feet up then it did the first 1600. Even with the short cuts and such, I ended up doing just shy of 6 miles. I was not wandering around lost, I just think that the mapping software is not accounting for some of the switchbacks that existed. (My uptrack is posted below). If you are planning this route, anticipate 7-8 if you stick to the trail.
Once on top though, I was greeted with some amazing scenery.
Plenty of peaks off in the distance. The view from North Lake looking South (just my opinion) is so amazing. a lot of nooks and crannies you cannot see from the South looking North
One good thing about deep snow on the summit is uh..it’s easier to anchor that antenna mast..just shove it in, and step around it to pack the snow in.
So, I ended up with 20 QSO across 7SSB, 7CW, 10CW, and 14CW. With 4 S2S. 20m seemed to be pretty good today as some of my QSO were the Eastern seaboard. 30m/10mhz was a bit iffy, I’m wondering if I was close enough to Slide Mountain that I was picking up interference from all the transmitters over there (~5miles North crowfly).
I used my KX2 and my QRPguys Tri-band vertical, and as usual it performed well. That by far is my favorite setup.
The hike down I opted to overland navigate and stay on the Western side of the spine I ascended. I was also wishing for my splitboard as the snow was amazing up high, and would’ve made from some awesome cold blower powder turns. My shortcut worked out well, as i ended up cutting off a mile from my up track, and landed back on the Flume trail right where the signpost/tunnel creek turn off is.
After knocking off Herlan peak I now only have two left from the Rim Trail Challenge. Ellis Peak and Scott Peak both of which are easy and in proximity to each other so I may just knock them out as an overnight backpack this Summer. I just need to stop letting myself get distracted by all the other peaks (and travel) I want to do :D.
Thanks for stopping by. Some more images are below..
uptrack
Wonder where the wind blows from
Sign at the trailhead
Crazy wind depositing on the summit.
South towards Snow Valley Peak (that might be Marlette Peak actually).
Head of a goat, body of a sloth :D. About sums up my hiking, crazy, slow and steady…
Huh?? SlothGoat? What award for Summits on the Air is called SlothGoat?? So I finally hit “Mountain Goat” (1000 Activator points), but on that same activation, I also hit Shack Sloth (1000 chaser points) via an S2S. Shack Sloth if you are a full time chaser is pretty easy to get, but the only time I would chase is to practice some cw or via summit to summit contacts (Log your S2S if you dont). Last fall I realized my chaser points were very close to my activator points, so with a lot of planning, and luck I managed to hit Sloth and Goat on the same activation on top of W6/NS-264 Boca Hill. There was nothing really significant about why I chose this peak. Leading into the weekend and watching the wx forecast, I knew there was a chamce for snow, so I had built 4 different plans/routes based solely upon various outcomes including reactivating the first peak I ever did as a SOTA activator (W6/NS-086 9614), which I activated under my original callsign (KK6TXU). Boca offered me the quickest exit if wx kicked up, and was the safest from an avalanche forecast perspective. It would also have been nice to do a unique peak too, and this activation put me at 110 unique peaks in 120 Activations; a pretty good percentage.
The approach to this peak is not too hard, and another one of those where winter time makes the ascent easier. Honestly I like the snow covered peaks for approach, I really should just bring all my winter modes with me (BC Ski, BC Snowboard, Snowshoes) and make a command decision on which ascent mode to run. Sometimes it is nice getting down the hill faster then up. I parked at the Boca dam and snowshoed over the dam. In the summer you can actually drive across to the NFS roads in the area. Looks like there is an area you can park when there is no snow.
Today marked the most number of contacts I have made on a single activation, I also managed quite a few S2S, and the bulk of the activation was CW.
Callsign
Band
Mode
Notes
KI4SVM
18mhz
cw
S2S, Complete and Sloth!
K0RS
7mhz
cw
K6ARK
7mhz
cw
S2S, booming in with your QRO
NS7P
7mhz
cw
K1LB
7mhz
cw
N0OI
7mhz
cw
K6CPR
7mhz
SSB
(I still phone occasionally :D)
KD6EOD
7mhz
SSB
NW7E
7mhz
SSB
KD6EOD
7mhz
SSB
K6MW
10mhz
CW
KB7HH
10mhz
CW
K1LB
10mhz
CW
Reno on 40 and 30
AA7DK
10mhz
CW
K6HPX
10mhz
CW
N4EX
14mhz
SSB
Nice to hear you again Rich
W0MNA
14mhz
SSB
W5BOX
14mhz
SSB
W0ERI
14mhz
SSB
AA1VX
14mhz
SSB
KX0R
14mhz
CW
S2S/ Bennett Mountain
KE6MT
5 mhz
CW
might be my first 60m QSO
KG3W
14mhz
CW
K3TCU
14mhz
CW
K0GWR
14mhz
CW
NJ0U
14mhz
CW
VE2JCW
14mhz
CW
W2SE
14mhz
CW
AB0BM
14mhz
CW
N1AW
14mhz
CW
N6DNM
7 mhz
SSB
Some other images..
The rock I was sitting on behind here made for a perfect SOTA DESK in the BC 😀 used my vertical today..
I have chased a few folks with the QCX from the QTH, but now it was finally time to use the QCX as my activation rig. It was on Easter Sunday and on a day that 30m propagation was not great and I was not on summit till noon. SotaWatch showed that I was the first spot in over two hours. I managed seven QSO over 25 minutes and then my battery decided it was time to shut off for recharge (oops..been testing a lot, forgot to check levels). Either way it was a successful activation on a unique summit. Full disclosure it was also the first time I have done an activation without using the decoder, and I managed to get a good copy on all those who called me whom I could hear, so I am getting better there too. Contacts included: AG6VA, K0RS, KR7RK, W7USA, WA9STI, W7GA and K7RJ. According to RBN I was reaching the VE6WZ beacon up in Calgary, approximately 700 miles. Last time I checked, I was putting out 2watts of power, but that was before I really tuned my EFHW. On the approach drive in *4×4 road* I managed to make it to within a mile of the summit, but overall this is a drive up summit. Either way, b/c I am in run training, the 1 mile 400 foot elevation just helps with the training, and I do my best thinking when I’m walking (more on that below). Those structures you see on the summit proper are from past deployments I think, all the radio towers, cell towers, and TV towers have been moved to other nearby peaks, overall (at least on 30m) this was an RF quiet peak.
Even in the winter roads and trails still look obvious so navigating was pretty easy. When I reached the top of Tunnel Creek trail/the Saddle I opted to stay along the ridge instead of dropping down to Twin Lakes. So it was spring time, and not sure why I’d not considered this in my planning, but, I was starting to notice more and more bear tracks going between trees.
The approach to this peak is not too hard, and another one of those where winter time makes the ascent easier. Honestly I like the snow covered peaks for approach, I really should just bring all my winter modes with me (BC Ski, BC Snowboard, Snowshoes) and make a command decision on which ascent mode to run. Sometimes it is nice getting down the hill faster then up. I parked at the Boca dam and snowshoed over the dam. In the summer you can actually drive across to the NFS roads in the area. Looks like there is an area you can park when there is no snow.
Backcountry Saunters 